Login | May 06, 2025
Legal tech and the unauthorized practice of law, 2023 edition
RICHARD WEINER
Technology for Lawyers
Published: June 2, 2023
A recent post in lawpracticetoday.org, which is put out by the ABA, points out that “Advancing Technology Poses Challenges to Enforcing UPL.”
UPL being the unauthorized practice of law*.
In other words: When does a robot’s actions actually become law practice and not just an adjunct to law practice?
So, we aren’t talking about large language models in the hands of lawyers here, but computer programs doing lawyer functions.
The article, which is linked at the end of the column, has several instances of computers winding up in court—or rather, of course, their programmers/owners.
The first is the infamous meltdown of DoNotPay, which I wrote about a couple of times when it was getting off the ground.
DNP billed itself as a “robot lawyer,” starting with canceling subscriptions, negotiating bills and filing different low-level court documents.
The owner called it “AI,” but the underlying tech had nothing to do with neural net technology.
Anyway, the owner challenged “anyone” to use the DNP technology as an actual lawyer in court. A couple of days later, he rescinded the offer. But what is lesser known is that he is being sued by multiple parties for practicing law without a license.
Next up is the case of the Florida Bar vs. TIKD, a company that analyses speeding tickets that the speeder texts a photograph of to them, determines whether or not they are worth fighting, and then refers you to a lawyer to fight it if appropriate.
I mean, you could just call a lawyer first, but.
The question here is if it takes a legal analysis to make that call.
The Florida Bar Association said that no, this doesn’t rise to that level, and that TIKD was only performing administrative functions.
And third is the story of a website which gives you step-by-step instructions on how to file a small-dollar bankruptcy and how to behave during creditor meetings and with the court. UPL?
The program was called Upsolve, and was a program run by legal aid. The bankruptcy judge found that this was UPL the instant the software “limited options.” OK.
Not enough to create a pattern, but enough to spotlight potential problems.
*In Ohio, the unauthorized practice of law comes under Ohio Revised Code 4705.07.
The full article with cites is here: https://www.lawpracticetoday.org/article/advancing-technology-poses-challenges-to-enforcing-upl/